Adding dried fruit to breakfast cereal
The Basics
“Starting the day with breakfast is also an ideal opportunity to get 1, or even 2 pieces of fruit into your diet”.
Dietitian, Tony Hirving, says that dried fruit is ideal:
“…Dried fruit doesn’t go off like fresh fruit (although it does have a use-by date); it can be kept for much longer than fresh fruit. Stock up on raisins, apricots, or whatever you like, and get into the habit of adding a small handful to your daily breakfast”.
“The sweetness of dried fruit can replace the sugar which you may be adding to your cereal –thus helping reduce your intake of ‘table’ sugar”.
“…Dried fruit is a good source of fibre and counts towards the 5-A-DAY target”.
Common Myths and Misconceptions
- “Dried fruit is full of sugar”. Weight-for-weight, dried fruit contains proportionally more sugar than fresh fruit because once the water is removed the sugar (and other nutrients) are concentrated in a smaller space – this doesn’t make dried fruit any less healthy than fresh fruit.
- “Dried fruit is too chewy”. Some dried fruit needs to be soaked before you can use it. If you choose dried fruits that are labelled as ‘ready-to-eat’ you don’t need to soak it and it shouldn’t be chewy.
- “Dried fruit is boring and tasteless”. If you find dried apples and prunes boring look out for more exotic dried fruits such dried mango, pineapple, and peaches, dried blueberries, cranberries or cherries.
Tips and Tricks
- Add a handful of raisins, sultanas, dried cherries, cranberries or blueberries, or a few chopped ready-to-eat apricots or prunes to your breakfast cereal.
- For a simple healthy breakfast, soak dried fruit salad in a mixture of 100% fruit juice and water overnight and stir into some yoghurt.
- If time is short in the morning, grab a handful of ready-to-eat dried fruits and nuts to eat on the way to work.
- Add a couple of handfuls of dried fruit when home baking muffins.
- You’ll find dried fruit in the home-baking section of most supermarkets. You may need to visit a health food shop to find some of the more exotic dried fruits.
- Look for dried fruit without added sugar – you’ll be better able to enjoy the real flavour of the fruit without consuming those unnecessary extra calories.
- Look out for own kids ‘lunch box’ size bags of dried fruit – perfectly portioned and ideal to have in pocket, draw or bag for snacking on later.
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